


Reciprocity

by nire



Series: The Cosmic Conspiracy [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Female Friendship, First Kiss, Fluff, Light Angst, Not Beta Read, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nire/pseuds/nire
Summary: Sequel to The Universe Conspires.Just because they're soulmates, doesn't mean it's easier for them. Peter and MJ learn to navigate their way through the Soulmate Situation.





	Reciprocity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [still_i_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/gifts).



> YO IT'S ALMOST FIVE AM AND I JUST WROTE SOMETHING  
> I wanted this to be fluffy but somehow a little angst sneaks in anyway oops?  
> Also my nation turns 72 today and I'm feeling patriotic, so have an entire segment dedicated to our cuisine.
> 
> Lastly, this one is for PerfumedWithObsession, who told me they wanted more from this 'verse.

Ned ditches them with hasty apologies— _sorry, guys, I totally forgot it’s my dad’s birthday today_ —and practically runs out the class before the bell even finishes ringing.

MJ says nothing, simply following Ned with her eyes, absently chewing on the pen she borrowed from Peter. She doesn’t usually chew her pens, but Peter once borrowed a pen from her and returned it all chewed up, and this is her returning the favor.

“So, do you still want to hang out?” Peter asks. What he means to ask is, _are you comfortable with being alone with me?_ But that sounds like something MJ might not be comfortable answering, too guilt-trippy and close to home. He doesn’t tack on the _it’s okay if you don’t_ in the end, because MJ already knows that.

“I have that trig homework,” she answers as she shoves her books in her bag.

“Oh.” He tries very hard not to show the disappointment. “Well, see you tomorrow.” He’s stopped patrolling before dinner, because most crimes happen when it’s dark anyway and it’s better to spend the time napping so he can stay up extra late or hanging out with Ned and MJ. But he’s not in a napping mood—hogwash, MJ told him once, there is no such thing as not in the mood for naps—so maybe he’ll just patrol early today.

But then, she says, “I hate trig, so I need someone to be around in case I stab the book.”

Peter grins wide in response. “You wouldn’t,” he accuses, a pathetic attempt to feign affront.

She shrugs. “Whatever. Your place?”

Since they showed each other soul marks, MJ has been hanging out more often with Peter and Ned. Ned is the only one in their school who knows about the Soulmate Situation—a term coined by Liz, who is apparently MJ’s confidant now, and that is just _scary_ —and he’s been amazingly understanding about it, going out of his way to always be around so that MJ feels comfortable being around Peter.

But Ned can’t make it today and Peter expected MJ to bail, but instead here they are, in his living room munching at even more Chex Mix, which May won’t stop making ever since MJ complimented it. MJ is cross-legged on the floor, chin resting in the palm of her hand, her homework spread out in front of her on the coffee table. Her eyebrows are furrowed, and every once in a while she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, only to have it fall back in front of her eyes not long after.

Peter’s used to finishing his homework quickly just so he can hit the streets longer, but today he’s taking his time. To be precise, he can’t focus on his homework because MJ is being very distracting. To be even more precise, that lock of hair is distracting. He has to make a conscious effort not to reach forward and touch it. He wasn’t lying when he told her from behind his mask that her hair looks soft and bouncy and smells great.

The thing is, Peter Parker has always been a bit of a romantic.

He believes in the goodness of humankind.

He believes that everyone deserves happiness.

He believes that soulmates are there for a reason.

He thought when he finally meets his soulmate, it would be perfect. There will be butterflies and happiness and everything will be easy, because they’re soulmates, like how it was between May and Ben. Peter knows that it’s not always that easy, that being soulmates isn’t a guarantee that it would be easy or that there would be a happy ending, but he wants to believe.

MJ would call him naïve, and she wouldn’t be wrong.

But of all his fantasies, not one of them involves a soulmate that doesn’t want a soulmate, so this is foreign territory for him. He can’t do anything else but try his hardest to never put her in a situation that makes her uncomfortable. Hopefully that’s enough.

 

* * *

 

MJ can feel him staring. She never thought herself to be the kind that gets stared at, but apparently she is, now.

MJ: _He’s staring_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _why wouldn’t he_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _you’re like, really pretty_

MJ: _Thanks?_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _so you agree?_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _you think you’re really pretty?_

MJ: _Ffs Liz_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _ok I’m done being Regina_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _but rly if he’s making you uncomfortable just tell him_

MJ: _You never did that to him when he stared at you_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _I didn’t mind it, he’s cute_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _also I’m not you_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _if it’s anyone else, would you call them out?_

Liz has a point. If it were anyone else, MJ would have no qualms calling them out to turn the tables. So now, she does exactly that.

“Hey bug boy, you’re staring.”

Peter starts. His ears turn red, his eyes all wide and panicked. “Shit, sorry, MJ. It’s just, I uh—”

Snap.

His brows furrow and, oh, he’s pouting. Cute. “Did you just take a picture of me?”

MJ hums, sending the picture to Liz. “Did I?” Her phone chimes as Liz replies. “Oh, Liz says you look cute.”

His voice goes high, suddenly, like he’s choking. He probably is. “You sent that to Liz?”

He looks like he’s going to use his web-shooters to grab her phone—not that he would _ever_ —so she pockets it. “Maybe don’t get caught staring next time.”

“So, it’s okay if I don’t get caught?” he says, and it sounds almost like teasing.

It’s so easy, she thinks. So easy to just let go when she’s around him. She can tell him that she stares at him too, a lot, only she’s better at not getting caught. She can tell him that actually, yes, stare away, because when it’s him it’s not an unpleasant feeling. She can tell him that she didn’t know she was worth staring at.

She doesn’t know if she’s like this because it’s him, or because she’s biologically and socially brainwashed to want to get close to her soulmate. She wants to believe in the former.

Something must have shown on her face, because he’s backtracking, fast. “I didn’t mean—sorry. Sorry. I won’t stare again.”

Guilt is quickly becoming a recurring element in her interactions with Peter. “Look, it’s fine,” she says, sighing. “It’s not like I don’t stare at you sometimes.”

“Uh. Okay?”

She flips her sketchbook open and shows him a page. “I like to sketch people in crisis, remember? For some reason, that’s your default mode.” And maybe she sketches him some other times, too, because he is not wholly unattractive, but that’s neither here nor there.

He wrinkles his nose. “Do I really look like that?”

“Unfortunately.” She closes the sketchbook and sits on it, in case he gets any ideas. With her already-blunt pencil, she circles _cos_ _α_ on problem number seven, around and around and around. She really does hate trig. “What’d you get for number seven?”

 

* * *

 

They’re watching BuzzFeed videos, because that’s the quality entertainment genius teenagers such as themselves indulge in on a winter afternoon. Peter has his laptop plugged to the TV with an HDMI cable. They’re sprawled on the sofa, Peter on one end, Ned in the middle, and MJ on the other end, her legs propped up the boys’ lap. There’s a bowl of Chex Mix in her lap, which only Ned and MJ eat because at this point Peter’s sick of them already. He has one hand around her left ankle, thumb rubbing over her soul mark. MJ doesn’t complain or pull away or even glance in his direction, so he thinks it might be okay.

They’ve watched all the interesting-looking short films already, so they shift to taste-test videos. They’re all so enraptured by the sprawl of Indonesian cuisine on the screen that they all jolt a little—MJ included—when May says from the door, “You know, there’s an Indonesian place three blocks away that we’ve never gotten around to trying.”

“Hi, May,” Peter says, and he tries his hardest to school his expression into something neutral, because it’s not like he’s been doing anything wrong. Ned greets May, too, and MJ waves lazily.

“Ned, Michelle, stay for dinner?” May asks. “We can be adventurous together.”

And that is how they end up eating beef rendang and rice for dinner, no one saying anything until they finish the first helping because holy shit, it might be the throngs of over-eager Indonesian netizens that brought this dish to number one on the CNN poll of world’s most delicious foods, but it certainly deserves the spot because none of them can guess how many types of spices go into this dish. When loading her plate with a second helping, MJ proposes a hypothesis that there might be illegal substances involved. May’s money is on cocaine, and she adamantly insists it’s not marijuana.

(Later, they discover that the Malaysian version uses a spice called the Clitoria flower, and being the very mature men that they are, Ned and Peter can’t stop sniggering. The women just roll their eyes, because honestly.)

MJ volunteers to wash the dishes and Peter offers to dry them for her. Ned and May just trade a knowing glance that they undoubtedly think Peter doesn’t notice.

She’s quiet as she washes the dishes, brows furrowed, expression pensive.

“MJ? You okay?”

“Fine,” she says, not looking away from the serving bowl she’s scrubbing. “Just processing that religious experience.”

“I thought you’re a non-believer.” He finishes wiping the plate and holds out his hand for another.

After rinsing it with little care, she passes the bowl to him. “I am now.” She turns off the tap, the bowl being the last item in the sink.

He’s still not very used to this MJ, the one standing in his kitchen gushing over food semi-seriously, the one admitting that she stares at him sometimes, the one letting him absentmindedly caressing her soul mark even though when other people do it, it’s a gross possessive thing. This MJ is distracting; it’s like his spider-senses are both dampened and amped up at the same time when he’s around her, because his field of vision narrows to her and only her and it borders on sensory overload sometimes how he can see the individual freckles across the bridge of her nose, the strands of hair that form a halo around her head when she takes off her hair tie, the pulse beating in the vein in her wrist. It’s an unpleasant feeling, and terrifying too, to have your perception so distorted by just one person. Does she feel like this, too, when he’s around? Is that why she’s so skittish?

But Peter Parker is a romantic, and a reckless one at that, so all this does not dissuade him from seeking her company. Instead, he drowns in her presence.

“You’re staring again,” she says, suddenly so close, pinning him against the counter with one sudsy hand pressed to his chest, right over his heart. He shivers. It has nothing to do with the soap water seeping through his tee.

He should say sorry, but somehow he feels it might not be the sentiment that she’s looking for. Instead, he gulps and asks, “Is that okay?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she asks, “Are you patrolling tonight?”

“Yeah.” He looks down to her hand, still pressed to his chest, and her left leg, planted firmly between his own. “MJ, what are you—”

“Returning the favor,” she says, as if it’s obvious.

He’s about to ask what favor, then her eyes flick to her hand on his chest, right over his heart, where his soul mark is, and _oh._ He grips the edge of the counter tight with both hands because he’s not sure what his teenaged, hormonal, lizard brain would do otherwise.

Then she pulls back, says, “Text me when you’re back home,” and leaves him alone in the kitchen so he can properly freak out.

 

* * *

 

MJ: _I might have done something stupid_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _what_

Lizz Lizz Motherfucker: _did you kiss Peter or something_

MJ: _no but worse_

Liz doesn’t reply, instead calling her. “Spill,” Liz orders, and she still sounds nice even when she’s being a tyrant.

So MJ tells Liz about him touching her soul mark, and her acknowledging it because a. she doesn’t want to make a scene around Ned, b. she doesn’t want to see his guilty face again, and c. she might even like it, _for fuck’s sake_. But that much is fine, she says to Liz, like whatever, she’s almost used to Peter being a sap around her. No, the Very Definitely Stupid thing is what happens after they washed the dishes.

Liz emits a tiny, high-pitched squeal. MJ feels betrayed.

“Okay, okay,” Liz says, and MJ can almost see her raise her hands in a placating manner. “I get why you’re freaking out now, but what were you thinking _then_?” It’s a testament to Liz’ overall sweetness that she can ask that question without the slightest bit sounding like she’s blaming MJ even though it’s most definitely MJ’s fault.

“I don’t know,” MJ says, throwing one arm over her eyes to block out the light. “It’s like I feel like I should even the playing field. Payback, you know. Returning the favor.”

“Hmm, yes. Well. If that’s your goal, I’m sure you achieved that. How red were his ears?”

“Red. But maybe that’s the spicy food.”

Liz laughs. Even her laugh is melodious.

“Never get a soulmate,” MJ tells Liz. “It’s so frustrating.”

“All human relationships are,” Liz says.

This is true, especially since MJ has sworn a lifelong oath to never treat any of her friends or family members any less than her romantic partners—ew, gross, did she just categorize Peter as a romantic partner, nope nope _nope_ —but still, she says, “Not ours.”

As soon as she says it she regrets it because gah, that’s so disgustingly sappy. It’s true, though. It should be complicated, because Liz practically dated Peter and unbeknownst to Liz, Peter put her dad in jail, and now Peter is MJ’s soulmate. There are love triangles with less convoluted plot twists. And yet, it’s anything but difficult.

“No, not ours,” Liz agrees, and MJ releases her held breath.

 

* * *

 

This is a bad idea, Peter thinks. MJ told him to text her, not call, and it’s past 1 AM already. But this sort of thing doesn’t happen often, and in the off chance that this terrible plan might work, it would be so worth it.

Well, he’s going to call. If she’s asleep, he can just leave a voicemail. Either way.

MJ picks up at the first ring. “This better be good, Parker,” she says, all grumpy and sleepy. Shit.

“Uh,” he answers. Because he’s eloquent like that.

“I told you to text.”

“Yeah. Bud I doughd you mighd wand do hear dis.”

He hears fabric rustling, and he thinks it might be MJ sitting up from her bed. “Why do you sound like that?” she asks, and it sounds like she might actually be worried for his well-being.

“Bid my dongue. Sblad.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” she says, but she sounds positively gleeful.

This is _so_ worth it.

So he tells her exactly what happened: he was just swinging around the city like normal, but then there’s a really cute cat sitting on a balcony, and he got distracted, and he basically slammed into a wall. He bit his tongue in the process, because he may or may not have been in the middle of baby-talking the cat.

MJ is cackling. She has a certifiably evil laugh. Villain-level. He tells her that. He doesn’t tell her that this laugh is why he calls her tonight.

“Loser,” she says, and that word has stopped being an insult long ago. “Go suck on some ice. I’m going to sleep.”

He does as she tells him, and then goes to bed with a numb tongue and a dopey grin.

 

* * *

 

Peter sounds perfectly normal in the morning. He doesn’t bring up the phone call. He doesn’t even tell Ned about the cat on a balcony and the baby-talking and the tongue-biting.

_I thought you might want to hear this,_ Peter said last night with a swollen tongue. Maybe her sleep-deprived mind is reaching, but MJ can’t help thinking that he might have purposefully humiliated himself just to make her laugh.

 

* * *

 

One phone call turns into another, and another, and another, and the next thing Peter knows he calls MJ every night to check in and tell her if anything of note happened during patrol. She always picks up, no matter how late, if only to tell him that he’s a dweeb and he should stop disturbing her sleep and hang up afterwards. The first time she said that, he didn’t call her the next day and she woke him up at 3 AM demanding why he hadn’t checked in with her.

“I thought you said I was disturbing your sleep!” Peter exclaims, throwing his hands into the air—in this case, down, because he’s on the ceiling—because figuring out what MJ wants is frustrating.

“Yes, but—ugh, I’m horrible at this—” Beat. “Ican’tsleepworryingaboutyou.”

“What?”

MJ doesn’t answer for a full five seconds. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Um, okay?”

“Look, if you don’t check in, I won’t know if you’re bleeding in a ditch somewhere.”

And he knows that checking in can also mean simply texting, but he likes hearing her voice, the way she uses insults as almost pet names, the way she laughs like a villain whenever he does something dumb, the way she grumbles at him in particularly late nights. He even likes the silences, when she simply listens in bad nights, when he messes up and someone gets hurt, when he saves someone from a particularly terrible fate.

So he never fails to call, and she never fails to pick up.

There are nights when she talks more than he does, too, usually when she’s reading something particularly good or abhorrently bad and she needs to vent. Tonight is such a night, with her just finishing _The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet_.

“This book is genius. There’s no grand plot about saving the galaxy, or a big war, or anything. It’s just a collection of moments with every character getting their own time in the limelight, and we get an insight into why they’re that way, with how their species’ culture is. But they’re also so much more than stereotypical examples of their species, because no community is a monolith here. And they also develop over the span of the book. There’s no grand villain, but that’s the point. These are everyday people in a multicultural universe, and most everyday people don’t have evil arch-nemeses to defeat, the adversity is much more personal than that.”

It’s a glowing review, especially from her, but all he can think about is how he wants to see her so, so bad, and unfortunately he’s still wearing his spider-suit, which somehow always makes him have less brain-to-mouth filter. “Can I come over?”

“Why?” she asks, and she sounds wary.

“I want to borrow the book.”

It’s a lame excuse, because she can just easily bring it to school tomorrow, but she doesn’t call him out on it. “Fine,” she says, “but you’re not sleeping over.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, mid-swing.

To Peter’s pleasure, MJ’s window is locked. He taps on the frame and she opens it. Instead of just giving him the book, she steps aside and lets him in.

The room is dark save for the light coming in from the window and the lamp on the desk where she obviously does her all her reading. The bed is still made; MJ never reads in bed due to the impossibility in finding a comfortable reading pose when lying down. She herself is standing in her pajamas, an oversized blue and red pinstriped men’s pajama set. Her hair is untied, let loose in all its bouncy curls’ glory, still slightly damp from the shower. She smells like mangoes.

He takes off his mask. “Hi,” he says with a grin that he’s sure looks dumb. And then, because he has a stupid teenage lizard brain, he asks, “Did you know you smell like mangoes?”

“No, I just buy the cheapest body wash available without checking if it smells like ass.”

He winces. “Sorry. That was dumb.”

In return, she closes her eyes in regret. “No. Sorry. Sleep-deprived.”

He can see the eyebags, a testament to her late nights reading and waiting up for him. Unthinking, he lifts a hand, cupping her cheek and swiping his thumb under one eye. “I should stop disturbing your sleep,” he says.

“Don’t be stupid,” she scoffs, even though she leans into his touch all the same anyway. “My books keeps me up at night, not you.”

“Doesn’t it occur to you to, oh, I don’t know, read less?”

“Doesn’t it occur to you to, oh, I don’t know, not fight criminals?” she shoots back, her mouth all pouty in a terrible imitation of how he talks.

He swipes the pout off her mouth with a thumb, the movement almost an afterthought. “I thought the books are what keeping you up at night.”

“When did I ever say otherwise?” she asks, one hand clamping the wrist of his hand that’s on her face. She doesn’t try to pull it away, instead holding it in place.

It suddenly occurs to him that they’re standing way too close to be making casual, teasing conversation.

“MJ?” he asks, and this is a terrifying thing to ask, but he promised to always ask her first. “Can I—can I kiss you?”

The grip around his wrist becomes tighter. Her eyes, almost black in this light, bore into his with an intensity he’s never seen before. Then, very low under her breath, she says, “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

It’s not like MJ doesn’t see this moment coming from a mile away. What used to be her greatest fear now feels like an inevitability.

It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself. It’s just testing how physically compatible they are. It’s purely scientific curiosity.

She’s never been very good at lying to herself; that’s what got her into this mess in the first place.

Peter leans forward, slowly, always considerate enough to give her an out, until his lips lightly touch hers. It’s barely a peck, then he pulls back, tilts his head, and kisses her again, and this time he lingers. His lips tug at her lower lip slightly, and the hand on her cheek moves to the base of her neck, his fingers in her hair. His other hand is on her waist, a perfectly gentlemanly position. She’s not sure what about the kiss, just that he’s surprisingly skillful about it, knowing how to time each kiss and where to put his hands, and it doesn’t take long until she kisses him back, melting in his hold and clinging to him for dear life.

And the worst part about it is that it’s all perfectly innocent, as far as kisses go. It’s all firmly on the first base, and he doesn’t try to push further, but already she feels like she’s about to burst from all the emotions: happy, overwhelmingly and inexplicably so; confused, because who taught Peter Parker to kiss like this; angry, because it feels like the universe is winning, and she’s losing; sad, because she knows something this good cannot last, and she’s not only talking about the kiss.

And primarily, she feels fear. Because the writers and scientists are right; this _is_ insanity. She’s losing her mind.

She shoves him back.

He looks like he has a myriad of emotions, too, but she recognizes the hurt first.

“The book,” she says, taking it from her desk and shoving it to him, then shoving him towards the window despite his continued attempts to ask if she’s okay (she’s not), ask what’s wrong (everything), and apologize (not his fault).

Finally, he’s perched outside her window, and he pulls on his mask and it doesn’t make her feel better even though he can’t see his face anymore. “Don’t forget to lock your window,” he reminds her before swinging away.

She doesn’t speak to him at all the next day at school. It feels like old days, so much so she has to fight the urge to break into his locker and anonymously apologize with food.

At midnight, he texts her to let her know he’s back from patrolling, but doesn’t call her. After nearly an hour staring at the text, she replies and tells him to come over.

It’s not even ten minutes after she sends the text when he knocks at her window frame.

She moves in front of the window, so they come face-to-mask. He’s hanging upside-down from a web attached to the balcony on the next floor. Then, instead of opening the window, she calls his phone. He picks up.

“Hi,” she says. Lame, but she doesn’t know what else to open with.

“Sup.”

“How was patrol?”

“Boring. The cat is on that balcony again, but I didn’t crash.”

This is so difficult. She doesn’t know what to say. “I sure hope not.”

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“No.” He deflates. “I mean, not yet. Wait. It’s easier to talk this way.”

He tilts his head. “Okay?”

“Look, it’s not your fault. You know me. I hate—I hate this whole soulmate business. But even worse, this whole feeling stuff. I can’t figure it out. It’s like my brain turned into a murky mush. I need to be objective. I need to be rational. I need to think before I do anything rash, but that all goes out of the window when you’re around.”

“I can relate,” he says, emphatically.

“And last night, it was—good. Great, actually. Also confusing because I have no idea where you learned to kiss like that.”

He chuckles, and the hand that’s not holding the phone goes to scratch his scalp, leaving him hanging by his feet on a thread. “Yeah, Liz said something like that. When I asked her about you, I mean.”

“Yeah. But it’s also not because you’re skillful or anything, it’s also that I have no idea if I feel like this because I like you, or because the universe wants me to like you. How can I tell if this is genuinely what I feel and not what’s just pre-arranged for me?” She’s pacing now, back and forth in front of the window.

Even from behind the mask, she can tell he’s frowning, because the lenses contract. “I don’t get it,” Peter says slowly. “Why is it not genuine if it’s pre-arranged? I mean, you face a lot of things that happens outside of your control everyday, and that doesn’t mean your reaction to it isn’t genuine.”

“Yes, but with all the others I don’t know what the factors that create those circumstances are, but there have to be reasons. This is just literal divine intervention.”

“I suppose,” Peter says. “I never think about it like you do. But MJ, you’ve said over and over that you don’t want this to control your life.”

“I don’t.”

“Isn’t by actively fighting it you’re letting it control your life, too?”

MJ pauses, narrowing her eyes. “Are you saying I should just give in, marry you, have children and grandchildren, and grow old together?”

“What? No.” He’s shaking his head wildly. “I mean, we’re definitely not there yet.”

She sighs. “So, what are you saying, Peter?”

“I’m saying maybe stop thinking about what the universe wants and start thinking about what you want. And so what if what you want is influenced by this?” He gestures to the general area where his soul mark is. “Science has never been able to solve the whole nature vs. nurture anyway. What’s this if not part of nature?”

MJ overthinks. That’s what she does. Peter’s solution is deceptively simple in its honesty, but MJ knows more than anyone that honesty, especially to herself, has never been her strong suit. But she supposes she has to try, somehow, otherwise he’s right. This will take up her entire life and she’ll spend all her time actively fighting something that she doesn’t want to influence her decisions.

She ends the call and throws the phone onto her bed, before unlocking the window and gesturing for him to come in. He does so, and when he’s inside and the window is closed again, he takes off his mask. His hair is all messed up and slightly damp, and she can smell shampoo.

“So,” she says, as casually as she can even though her heart is going a mile a minute, “I thought about it and I know what I want for now.”

“And what’s that?” Peter asks. His eyes are wide, almost terrified. He shouldn’t be, she thinks.

“Returning the favor,” MJ says.

This time, she kisses him first.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, let me know what you think. <3


End file.
